Episode Transcript
Speaker 0
If you've ever been told that waking up five times a night is just normal at your age, this episode is for you.
Speaker 1
Ugh. I hate hearing that, and I've heard it way too often. And today's guest is here to say, yes. Normal, maybe. But something you just need to accept, absolutely not.
Speaker 0
We're joined by Stefan Underwood, senior VP of methodology at Exos, a human performance company that's worked with everyone from elite athletes to Fortune one hundred executives to special ops teams.
Speaker 1
And in this conversation, we're not just talking about, oh, get more rest. We're actually talking about why sleep might be the single biggest lever for your emotions, your muscles, and your brain health. All the stuff.
Speaker 0
Yeah. All the effort that I've been putting in in the gym and learning how that's impacted by just five nights of bad sleep. Let's just say I'm refocused on better sleep more than ever now.
Speaker 1
I hear you. And I think what I love most about this conversation is that Stefan breaks it down into a really simple framework. It's your biology, your environment, and your distractors. Easy.
Speaker 0
Easy. This is part one of our conversation with Stefan. Let's dive into the so what of sleep. This episode is brought to you by Indi, Canada's leading mattress brand, trusted by over one million happy sleepers. We often think of sleep as something we can sacrifice to get more done. But as you'll hear in today's episode, sleep is actually what helps everything else work better. It's when your brain consolidates memories and learning, your muscles recover and grow, your emotions reset, and your body repairs for the day ahead. One of the simplest ways to support better sleep is by creating the right sleep environment. Endy mattresses are designed with breathable, cooling comfort foam and motion isolating layers to help minimize disruptions so you can get the quality sleep your body needs because sleep isn't time off. It's time put in. Learn more at indy dot com and sign up for our tip insider paid subscription at This is Perimenopause on Substack. If you do that and follow Indy on Instagram or Facebook, you'll be entered for a chance to win a free Indy bedroom makeover from now until August twenty fourth. Terms and conditions apply. Are we saying this correctly, Stefan? Stefan. Stefan. Stefan. I knew it was I was like, oh my gosh. I'm gonna get this wrong, so I'm just gonna own it. Stefan.
Speaker 1
I dated I dated a Stefan Stephan
Speaker 2
in
Speaker 1
but I was in love with the Stephan, and he didn't give me the time of day.
Speaker 2
That's too funny.
Speaker 1
I married neither of them, but, you know Yes.
Speaker 2
A little bit of a
Speaker 1
little bit of high school here, you know, history for Michelle.
Speaker 2
Too funny.
Speaker 1
Stefan, welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you here today. And, I think before we we're here to talk about sleep and recovery and all kinds of amazing things but before we dive into that I'd love if you could tell us a little bit about Exos and your background and what you do at Exos because I think your background is not what most people would expect.
Speaker 2
Well, first of all, thank you for having me on. It's, it's really gonna be fun. Let me tell you a little bit about Exos. Exos is a human performance company. We support humans. That that's the simplest way I could put it. And when I say that, I mean all humans across all different walks of life. So we started as a company called Athlete Performance back in the late nineties. And so started in an elite athlete population. And we're talking about, holistic high performance coaching. So dietitians, strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists, etcetera, etcetera. And this is all based out of the US. We began supporting that population, but from the start, it wasn't about athletes. It was about supporting people. Our founder was never hell bent on supporting just athletes. And so he created this idea of athlete performance. It was a a called a safe haven, a protective space for athletes. So not allowing in cameras, trying to put everything under one roof, a place for their performance. It was possessive, plural, athlete's performance. Right? It's about them. He never put his name on the front door, and I love that. I think it speaks to the the culture that we continue to have today. But put everything in one place so that we could have this integrated approach, this seamlessly integrated approach to supporting people. But very quickly, like I said, he was never about just supporting athletes, and so it expanded very quickly beyond just supporting athletes. We are very prevalent in supporting, military populations, special operations community, and we also support a lot of Fortune one hundred companies and other organizations around the world with their corporate well-being strategies. So, again, we really support any human, that is seeking to bring their high performance to the moments that matter most. My role, I've been with the company for fifteen years, Started as a strength and conditioning coach. That was my background, and my first degree was in exercise science. And, moved throughout the company over the years, and now I'm fortunate enough to lead a team of diverse subject matter expertises. So I am our senior vice president of methodology. My team consists of brilliant individuals with, you know, PhD in rehabilitative medicine, you know, or sports science or applied neuroscience or dietetics or on and on. And so we can sort of throw these fun human performance problems or thought questions on the table and really get different perspectives, from from all these professionals that are, again, brilliant human beings. And so that's what I get to do on a day to day now, and that influences the way we show up in all of those areas that we support people. So the work that my team does helps support our sport business, helps support, you know, tactical business, and helps support, our our corporate business. So that's a a little bit about Exos. We like I said, we started athletes performance, but we rebranded, I think, it was twenty fourteen to to Exos and have not looked back since.
Speaker 0
Amazing. That's, very, very impressive. And, when we talked when we first met, thanks to a brilliant physiotherapist that you and I have in common. Yes. Shout out to Tyson. We, we talked about sleep and how fundamental that is regardless of who you are, where you are, and what you're doing. And we loved how you framed it or how you talk about redefining the value proposition of sleep. Can you can you tell us what you mean by that and why reframing our need for sleep is so?
Speaker 2
Yeah. Absolutely. So, look, first, to start off, I am a proud, proud generalist. I am not a sleep expert. I am like I said, I'm a proud generalist, but sleep is a big part of what we dive into because it's one of the most significant systems that we have. I mean, it it literally every single cell and system in our body. There is there's not a an example of something you're trying to do well that I can't tie back to how sleep would help you do it better. So so that that's as a starting point, I'd say that. But when I talk about redefining the value proposition, and especially where I'd love our conversation to go today, look, it's probably around the topic of sleep. If people aren't sleeping well, there's gonna be potentially two camps listening. Right? And and Mhmm. No judgment, not right or wrong, but there's sort of two different places people might approach us from. One is the person who understands the value proposition of sleep, desperately wants to sleep better, but is struggling to sleep. Right? And then the other is hand up, Michelle. Hand up. And then the the other the other group is perhaps the group that deep down, they know it's good for them. It's like nobody is unaware that sleep is good for you. Like, I have a slide when I present on sleep to corporations, to executives, that literally just has a quote, sleep is good for you and is attributed to every mom in history. Like, nobody is unaware. Sleep is good, but, for whatever reason, it's the first thing that they sacrifice when they need more time. Right? You've got that person who is working hard through the day, has their career, comes home, has kids, like, needs to prep for the next day, but also get kids lunches ready for the next day. Like, on and on and on. The list never seems to end of responsibilities. Similarly, they know sleep is good for them. Deep down, They make intentional choices to sacrifice their sleep. That's where I'll get more time from in the day. And so those are two different camps. The one that's like, no. No. Like, I hear you, and I'm in bed at the right time, and I'm doing all these things to try and protect my sleep, and I can't sleep versus, yeah. I I sort of hear you, but I'm sacrificing my sleep by by as as a choice. And those are two different angles. And and the way I like to approach that conversation is to there there's a a so what and a now what. We need to provide the so what of sleep. And, really, that's where I talk about reframe the value proposition. If if you are the person listening who is making those choices that cuts into sleep, I hear you. Like, I totally feel that of the responsibilities that you have. But I wanna tell you a little bit more about sleep to maybe make you rethink those decisions or, you know, reframe the equation, as you balance out priorities of things. That's reframing the value proposition, helping people learn more about what sleep does for us in a way that's meaningful to them where they go, maybe I don't wanna sacrifice that. Maybe that's important for me to understand. And then we get more people in the camp that say, okay. Now I am trying to sleep. Now give me the now what? Because I I'm I'm here. I'm committed. I'm in my bed. Help me get better sleep. Right? And, again, I'm not a sleep expert, and if we're talking clinical sleep dysfunction, I would refer to other people, but there are things we can all do as general human beings to try and protect our sleep a little bit.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's maybe talk about, some of the so what. And what, especially in the context of a perimenopausal woman, what are the things that a lack of sleep is, either contributing to or preventing?
Speaker 2
It's a great question. And there's such a long list. I've got to pick some of my favorites. Mhmm. But let's let's start off with a few things. So did you know this we'll play the did you know? Did you know sleep is really where we manage our emotions, so to speak. So it's where we sort of consolidate emotional, you know, moments of information before. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Regular ourselves to be able to show up the next day ready fresh back at it. And so that specifically happens in our REM sleep when we're dreaming. Right? But what we know is if you are lacking sleep and specifically REM sleep, that is robbing you of one opportunity to sort of consolidate those emotions from the day before. So you show up the next day already a little bit more emotionally charged. Interesting studies of how they figure this out. Show people really alarming images that aren't enjoyable to look at and then send them off to sleep in a lab. Control group gets to just sleep and gets their REM sleep. Experimental group gets to go to sleep. And anytime through the polysomnography, like, manage anytime a person's about to get into REM sleep, they disrupt them just enough to make them not get into REM sleep. And so they wake up in the morning thinking they slept, but they didn't really get any REM. And then they're asked to rate to those emotionally charged images from the night before. And the group that got REM is much more disturbed by the images. They rate them significantly higher versus the group that got REM sleep is able to consolidate that. It's like, yeah. You know, it wasn't so bad.
Speaker 1
Wow. You just explained my morning though for me because I had, like, a highly charged day yesterday. I did not sleep well last night. And this morning, I just got on, when I we got on this call, I'm like, Mikaela, I feel so anxious. I feel so, like, I feel sick to my stomach. I just can't calm myself down. I can't calm my and I did not sleep last night. Oh my goodness. Okay. So I'm this is normal. This is okay.
Speaker 0
Well, it's not even just that you didn't sleep. It's that you didn't get to the REM sleep.
Speaker 1
I did, which is
Speaker 2
fascinating. Yeah. So now let's take it a step further. Right? We know that regulation is blended when we don't see this is a human thing, by the way. Like, let alone perimenopausal women, as you said, like, framing it up for as a population. All kids. Right? Let's go to they're all humans. Let's go to kids for a moment. You send your kids away to a sleepover. They don't get sleep. They are absolute nightmares the next day. Right? Like, they're just scooters. Right? Yeah. And they're flying off. I don't know. Think of any time a kid is acting out, where what are what are the things we start going to? Are you tired? Are you hungry? Like, what are we just get better as adults at maybe masking it, but we're still fighting an uphill battle. So it doesn't mean you can't emotionally regulate, but it's harder. And so now let's pair that with bring that back to the perimenopausal woman who perhaps has children. For quite often, that stage in life corresponds with, like, peak career, and they're stepping into maybe a new role with the highest demands in leadership, and they want to show that calm, steady leadership role, that's a real, like, uphill battle if you're just that much more emotionally charged and wanna fly off the handle, want to say the things you're really thinking in a frustrating moment. Right? Whereas a leader, I should say that. That's not good leadership. And so this is why it matters to get your sleep. Right?
Speaker 0
Yeah.
Speaker 2
This is one of the ways we can reframe the value prop.
Speaker 0
Okay. That's that is a lot more compelling than if you don't sleep enough, you're gonna be grumpy.
Speaker 2
Yeah. For sure.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 2
And we can we can keep going. Right? So let's look at why why else do we want to sleep. It's also where we learn things. So if we go to that woman who's in peak career right now, we are we look at AI, you look at the rate of change right now in today's world. When I speak with a lot of business leaders, like, the one truth of the person who will get ahead, high performance in your career is the one who can master new skills quickly, who can learn things, is adaptable. You can't have a conversation about learning without sleep. It's where we learn. In fact, anyone listening to this podcast, if we wanna say how much did they learn, we can't give them a quiz after. We can't, like, send out the follow-up podcast test. Don't worry. There's no test. And say, here's your like, what what what did the team talk about? We need to set it the next day because that's where your goal has gone from short term into long term memory, where we've actually learned it. Like, sleep learning takes place while we're asleep. That's where we also consolidate memories and learn things. And so if you're that person who is trying to pick up new things, be in an adaptable career, if you're cutting your sleep short, you are hurting your ability to learn, adapt, and grow with those new things. So Is
Speaker 1
that happening in in ramp or in deep, or when is the learning happening? What stage?
Speaker 2
Well, actually, interestingly, it depends on the type of learning. So there's rote learning and conceptual learning. Right? And so, like, rote learning and straight memorization tends to happen more in deep sleep, and then, like, conceptual learning and connecting concepts together happens in REM. So that's where we just tend to say learning and sleep are linked. There's different types of learning that take place in different stages. Yeah. And motor learning That's awesome. Tips thrown in that window. Like, if you if you're when I talk with athletes, we're trying to, like, learn new skill. Right? Like, motor learning and the way you move. If you're getting into the gym for the first time in your life and you're trying to, like, learn how to deadlift properly or squat properly, like motor learning, how we move our body, that also helps us sleep. That's why we start moving, refining those.
Speaker 1
That's crazy.
Speaker 0
And in the context of working out, what about muscle? Increasing muscles? So if you've been on Instagram for five minutes and you're over the age of thirty five, your algorithm is feeding you, you need to build muscle, you need to build muscle, you need to build muscle, you're gonna be frail and old and break. And and and we do need
Speaker 2
I'm sorry.
Speaker 0
I shouldn't be so flippant about
Speaker 1
We do. But We do.
Speaker 0
We need to take that seriously. So can we talk about I I have a trainer and he will say muscle is built in the twenty three other hours of the day, not the hour. Obviously, you need to go to the gym, but the really important stuff is what you're doing outside of the gym. So what is sleep doing in the context of muscle for those of us who are trying to, you know, do a pull up?
Speaker 2
Well, I like your trainer. Spot on and agree. Right? The one hour is that's the stimulus. You you can't grow muscle without that. You need the stimulus, but it's the other twenty three hours of the day where the recovery is taking place, where we are adapting to set stimulus, where we're seeing the changes to our body. And it look. You're spot on. Before we come to the sleep piece, you're spot on. Heavy resistance training is a, I'll say, a critical piece of aging. It's critical for men and women. Like, there's universal benefits as we look at aging. Right? So, like, when you talk about heavy lifting, it combats muscle loss, it prevents osteoporosis, it preserves your balance, it boosts your metabolism. All of these things are the stimulus for getting, and we don't get that with, like, light repeated weights. It it you don't get it in the same way if you're sort of that, like, endurance style light weights. You get it when you're lifting heavy. I'm talking, like, seventy five to eighty percent of your one rep max to higher. Now that's true for men and women. Here's where it's unfair to women. I feel like a jerk saying it as a man. It's the the cards we got dealt. But, like, men have a, like, call it like an off ramp, like a a steady decline of our anabolic hormones as we age. Like, we're on, like, a consistent, like, shift downhill, like, as a ramp. Mhmm. Right? Women hit perimenopause and and run off of a cliff. Right? It's a much more abrupt rapid hormonal change than what men are experiencing.
Speaker 0
So it
Speaker 2
becomes arguably I know. I'm sorry. It's okay. You want Arguably even more important for women to really get in that heavy resistance. You need that anabolic stimulus because the things that we're preserving our muscle mass, which is such a key piece of the antiaging process, we'll say, the things that preserve them hormonally are now gone. And so we need to, like, bypass that hormonal change and just still apply a stimulus that requires our body. We're still adaptable human beings. We're still adaptive systems. So we need that stimulus to help us adapt. Tying that back to sleep specifically. Well, one of the number one things that sleep does to preserve that muscle growth is, when you sleep, you get into that deep sleep, it is blunting your cortisol response. So a lot of people probably heard about cortisol. It is if I say if we play word association, I say cortisol, it's the word that gets said back.
Speaker 1
You say stress.
Speaker 2
Yes. It's a stress hormone. Now look, that does not mean it's bad. Just to reframe that for a moment. If we had no cortisol ever, like, that would be problematic. Part of our circadian rhythm, we'd have healthy sleep cycles. Cortisol rising in the early hours of the morning is part of what wakes us up. Right now, it's ten AM my time as we're recording this. I actually have some cortisol. It's telling me this is a time to be alert, awake, productive, functioning. What I don't want is to be at nine o'clock tonight still having high cortisol. Yes. And when we get into sleep, that's where our cortisol dips and drops. Right? Cortisol is catabolic, the opposite of anabolic. Cortisol is not good for maintaining insulin. It is quite the opposite. And so we can think of sleep as a little bit of, like, a catabolic shield, like a shield against us being catabolic. So all the work you're putting in to build muscle and to put the stimulus on and you, Mikhail, you go see your trainer, you spend some time, you sling around some heavy weight, if you're skipping sleep, you're gonna or if you're having poor sleep and you're waking up a lot, you're gonna have more cortisol spikes, which is gonna put you into more of a catabolic state than an anabolic state, especially since, yes, our anabolic hormones are released during sleep. But to dispel a little bit of a myth, that doesn't automatically mean that you're building muscle while you're asleep because you're also fasting while you're asleep. And we need nutrient intake of protein to have proteins synthesis to build muscle. So it's almost about creating that catabolic shield. When we sleep, we protect ourselves against any muscle loss while putting, you know, hormones in the system that are gonna be supportive of protein synthesis. So mixed meal like interactions with other twenty three hours of the day throughout all of that, we're building a muscle. There was, I know we talked about this in prep, and I was like, let's go look at, like, literature to see if there's sort of a stat we can pull from peer reviewed journal articles. And there was one that came out in twenty twenty that was fascinating, but there was an abundant amount of research on this. Like, so what would it mean to look at resistance training versus not resistance training if I sleep versus still asleep? So, again, I'm reframing it. The person is going, I'm gonna go see my trainer. I'm gonna get in the gym. I'm gonna work hard. Twelve, sleep is where it pays off. What this study found right? So human subjects were exposed to five nights of sleep restriction with sleep restriction was defined as four hours a night. Mhmm. And then the other half yeah. And then the other half exposed, like, a full night sleep, eight hours in bed. That was the control group. Right? And what they found was they're restricting sleep to four hours per night, and then they're doing high intensity resistance training. The group that was restricted to four hours of sleep per night for just in just five nights of doing that reduced their protein synthesis approximately eighteen to nineteen percent. Like, they're almost a fifth of their protein synthesis off. So it's not to say that you're not getting any protein synthesis, that you're not growing or building any muscle. But, like, you're putting in this effort in the gym, you might as well sleep that night to get all of the benefit from it. Because your trainer is right. It's not about the hour you're in the gym. It's the other twenty three hours, including all that time in your sleep, that you are building new muscle and preventing any muscle wasting, which is the downhill slide into aging. Right?
Speaker 1
Wow. And so sorry. Was was it conclusive then that there was also a difference in the amount of muscle that they built at the end, or was that just kind of something we can assume based on proto the protein synthesis?
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, I mean, protein synthesis means is the building of muscle. Like, myofibrillar protein synthesis is the technical terminology building muscle.
Speaker 1
Dumb it down for me.
Speaker 2
Eighteen to nineteen percent, it means they had eighteen to nineteen percent less muscle.
Speaker 1
Less muscle. Oh my god.
Speaker 2
In just five days.
Speaker 0
In just five days. So
Speaker 2
It was the decrease of almost twenty
Speaker 0
And you mentioned food intake, and we've had someone on to talk about what even one night of bad sleep does to your hunger hormones Yeah. And signaling. So
Speaker 2
Leptin and ghrelin. Absolutely.
Speaker 0
Mess. Yeah. So not only are you not building you're you're you're building nineteen to, you know, twenty percent less or eighteen percent less muscle, eighteen percent less muscle. And then
Speaker 2
Like, you're worst for your choice.
Speaker 0
Your brain is saying, hey, let's have the Twinkies and Coca Cola. You know? Forget the scrambled eggs and
Speaker 2
There's a
Speaker 1
full Twinkies out, Miguel. That's impressive.
Speaker 0
I don't know. I don't even that's like
Speaker 1
I don't know where that came from. I don't
Speaker 0
know. They do. I think they do.
Speaker 2
I don't know why. Resistant to all things. So even if they don't make them, you can still get some from the sixties. You can
Speaker 1
probably yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0
That that that food will survive a nuclear holocaust. Right? Cheese whiz and Twinkies.
Speaker 2
Exactly. But you're spot on. And and so now you're making the worst choices. And and even though that's what your brain is telling you to go, like, that's now what you're craving, you also remember have less regulation when you're short sleep back to the first value prop. So you're more likely to give and be like, you know what? I'm gonna grab the twinkle. Yeah. You don't have the regulation to say, I don't think it's the right choice. Yeah. Yeah. So so, I mean, all of these are ways of, like, reframe the value proposition. Like, if we summarize all that and look, there's so much more. But if we looked at this, I mean, then you get into the brain health with aging. Right? Like, in deep sleep, we have this thing called the glymphatic system. It bathes our brain. It's it's literally everyone's probably heard of the lymphatic system and a g to the front. And it's cerebral spinal fluid that drains deep sleep. We're literally getting a a bath. Like, it's washing our brain, taking away metabolites, like waste products from our brain. And so when you look at some of those waste products that are prevalent in people with neurodegenerative disease, k. There's there's certain markers like tau protein that's elevated when we have poor sleep and we don't get deep sleep because we miss out on that path to get away those waste products. So even like physical brain health. So when you start talking about everything from brain health, learning, brain fog, building muscle, emotional regulation to show up as the parent or employee or leader at work that you wanna be or leader in your community you wanna be. Like, all of these things are just a few of the examples that are true for sleep. And so when I'm talking to a person that is saying, yes. It's just that much more important though that I I get this extra thing done or I do this. I I again, I hear you. Like, I understand the ever expanding to do list, and I see it in my wife and the tax that she pays. And it's like, I gotta get in a you know, I've gotta do this or I've gotta do that. But to be able to say, at what cost? Could that thing be deprioritized and wait till tomorrow if I wanna show up as the leader, the the person,
Speaker 1
the The mom, the
Speaker 2
the whatever, the community advocate, whatever is big in your life. Like, to show up as your best, sleep is such a part of that.
Speaker 0
And that's why we wanted to have this conversation with you about the value proposition of sleep because we know that women are socialized to be martyrs and to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of their family and everybody else. And it becomes very easy to not look after ourselves. And it's also hard to so it's hard to put ourselves first, a, to begin with. Then b, when it's just, okay, I know I need more sleep. But but if you can reframe it as and this has been really helpful for me. No. No. I want to be strong. I want to live a long healthy life. I want to prevent disease. I want to do all of these things, and so I'm building muscle. And now that I know what sleep means to that goal, it's a lot easier for me to say, okay. No. I'm putting everything away in the form for the school trip and the whatever. This is this can all wait until tomorrow. But I'll be honest, I couldn't do that or, you know, I I don't know that I could do that before without having this kind of information. So thank you.
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And and look, I'll be the first to say, I mean, as I talk with my wife, there is just to be clear, there is a robust body of literature on household labor and specifically, like, the quote unquote mom tax. It is evidenced widely studied in sociology and psychology. I said my first year is exercise science. My second degree was a master's degree in organizational psychology, and I love getting into that, like, that that side of the conversation as well. And I think it's it's really important to understand. I I look. I try my hardest to contribute around the household. I am a a dad who is a very active dad and coaches the sports teams, and I I contribute. I'll cook food, and I will do dishes, and I will, like, I will do things. I was raised by a really strong woman that was like, you are gonna know how to contribute. And so I think when I was younger, I used to think, you know, my wife would say things like, I feel like I'm keeping the household running. And in my mind, I'd be like, I feel like that negates my contribution. So I started reading the research. There was this research, paper that came out in, like, maybe, like, five years ago. It was first that started actually putting stages to it. So the paper was called the cognitive dimension of household labor. Okay? And what the paper put together was that there's sort of these, like, four sequential steps to, like that that take it that have cognitive demand. And there's anticipating a need. Mhmm. They're identifying options. There's deciding on a course of action, and there's monitoring the outcome. So ident anticipating a need, realizing that a kid is gonna outgrow their winter coat soon. They need to get a new coat. Right? Identifying options, researching brand size of sales, deciding on, you know, course of action, which one are we gonna buy, and then, like, monitoring the outcome, ensuring that it fits, it's washed, it's worn, it's not lost, all of that. And I remember reading that and thinking this was for a paper when I was in my masters, and I remember thinking through that, and I was like, you know, that's really fair. I think I do really good at helping with identifying and deciding. My wife will bring something up, and I'm like, absolutely. And I will help research things, and we'll identify, and we'll decide. I'm like, I think I lack at the anticipating and the monitoring. Like, I wouldn't know my kid was gonna outgrow their coat until they were like, dad, my coat doesn't fit. And then I read the conclusion. And in the con right as I'm thinking, like, well, I got, like, fifty percent right. You know, like, I got stages two and three and then one and four. Literally, as I'm reading, like, the takeaway, the conclusion, it says the author found that while parents sometimes share the decision making step, which feels like having a say or power, mothers disproportionately shoulder the anticipating and monitoring stages one and four. And I was like and I went to my wife. Like, I was writing this paper for school. I was like, I appreciate you. Thank you. So it it's a very it it is a very real research thing.
Speaker 0
And so this in a special section on our new substack. Like, please share
Speaker 2
Please share.
Speaker 1
With your Well, it but it's true. We when Mikael and I have this conversation many times where, yes, it's great that our husbands are going grocery shopping. That's awesome. But they don't know that the mayonnaise in the fridge is almost empty and why it won't eat. And I'm just I don't even know that why it likes mayonnaise, but why it won't eat his sandwiches if there's not mayonnaise on it. Like, there's so much going on behind the scenes that grateful that you go to the grocery store. Thank you. But there's a lot that took that got to that list that you can now breeze through thirty minutes and, you know anyway, I agree. Thank you for recognizing our Thank you. Invisible labor. Thank you.
Speaker 2
No. And and look. All I can do is try, but I I can't claim to have gotten any better at it. I I I I'm still so bad at the anticipating spot. For every reason in the workplace, I do great. But, again, like, I'm a very active father, but, again, I'll I'll notice that my kid's coat doesn't fit when my kid's wearing a coat where the sleeves come down to here. And I go Yeah.
Speaker 1
And you're like, oh.
Speaker 2
But that will never happen because my wife is anticipating. It's not yeah. But all I can say is thank you. But but to bring it back to this idea of sleep, it's why I empathize with a sense or a feeling of a long to do list because it's like, well, if I don't do this, who's going to do it? And this needs to be done. Mhmm. But if we can come back to this place of the reframe, Mikael, the why. Like, at the end of the day, we all want to hopefully live as long and healthy lives as possible, especially, like, if we're staying in this context of mom tax and parent rights to, like, see our kids grow, to, like, see the people they become. And, like, I'm not naive enough to think that we get to choose that. But as we look at all that, like, that's the why we're doing it is is is for that. And and we wanna make our moments really, really last with our kids and so many things like being able to be well regulated and showing up as the best version of ourselves, which none of us is perfect at. Like, we all have those moments where, like, later we're like, and I wish I could do that one again. Mhmm.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2
But but but more often than not, right, and all of that is bolstered by sleep. And so Yeah. If you can have that reframe, it's like, I hear you that there's a to do list of getting to bed is so critical. So if we're in the camp of people that cut into the night and they're, like, wrapping things up at I've I've got some friends who are moms that are, like, they'll be wrapping things up at, like, midnight, one AM, and going to bed. And I'm like, you just need to sleep.
Speaker 0
Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Okay. So so so I think everyone now is, like, convinced, like, that so what is it's been reframed. But now what? Now what? Now what? Please, like, tell us how to sleep.
Speaker 0
Wow. That more than covered the so what of sleep. It's not just important. It's everything.
Speaker 1
For sure. And this is why we're having Stefan back next week to share the now what of sleep.
Speaker 0
Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so that you know when the episode drops. Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and write a review.
Speaker 1
So more women can find us and get a better understanding of what to expect in perimenopause.
Speaker 0
This information is not intended as medical advice. The intent of this information is to provide the listener with knowledge to support more efficient and effective communication with their medical provider.
